


When She Went Away, When She Came Back

by Browneyesparker



Series: Symphonies [1]
Category: Perception (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Romance, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-25
Updated: 2014-06-25
Packaged: 2018-02-06 04:45:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1844812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Browneyesparker/pseuds/Browneyesparker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Connecting one-shots about Kate & Daniel and their journey from the brink of madness to finding each other. Rated T.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When She Went Away, When She Came Back

Kate was gone.

Daniel couldn’t tell at first, but his world had started to spin out of control. Without her to draw him out of his mind, he got deeply entrenched in it. He stopped working for the FBI, stopped going into the office, eventually Natalie stopped visiting him. Nobody in real life could reach him even though they tried. He started hearing her voice all of the time, wherever he went. No matter what he did, he couldn’t escape it. All the other people who came in and out of his life to visit disappeared and she was the only person he saw.

Daniel was a mess, his life was in shambles. One day, he forgot where he was . Forgot his name and what he was supposed to do with his life and everything in between. Then one day with the help of some powerful drugs, it all came crashing back and invaded the corners of his mind again, reminding him of everything he was trying to forget.

Kate was gone. The person he had been seeing on a daily basis was just a figment of his imagination.

The doctors came to talk to him every day, tried to get him to open up and tell him what was wrong with him. They tried to get him into group therapy and to take medicine, but he hid the pills in his cheek and chucked them when the nurse wasn’t looking. He made impudent remarks about the other patients, trying everything he could to get them to alienate him. When they did, he spent most of his days in his room and most of his nights playing the piano in the activity room.

Don’t you want to get better, Dr. Pierce? the beautiful black nurse would ask him every single morning as she led him back to his room after another sleepless night of pounding the piano keys, while Kate would watch him silently from her seat beside him.

He shook his head, he didn’t want to get better. Not if it meant that he wouldn’t get to see Kate every single day for the rest of his life. But he didn’t ever tell the beautiful black nurse this because he knew that she wouldn’t understand if he did.

Sometimes Daniel would have visitors during visiting hours. Max, Paul, a handful of his students would stop by to see him. They would all talk to him, try to draw him out of himself, but he didn’t care if they were there or not. They all had the same problem, none of them were Kate.

Eventually everybody except for Max stopped coming to see him. And even then his young aid stopped trying to have conversations with him, instead he would spend their hour together reading to him. At the end of every visit, he would pat him on the shoulder and tell him that he really wanted him to get better but he had decided he was going to stop trying to force him to do it.

And time went on, Daniel still refused to get better. He refused the help of his doctors and nurses and his fellow patients. They never stopped trying, never let him go. He spent every single day trapped behind for grey walls with other crazies and fruit loops as his only real life companions. They had lots to say to them when he didn’t have anything to say to them.

One day in early fall, the red-headed girl with freckles and a drug addiction asked him what the real Kate would think if she could see him now. He was struck by her insight but for the life of him, he couldn’t formulate an answer even though he knew what the answer was.

She wouldn’t like it. She had always fought hard to keep his demons at bay. Until she had fallen in love with her ex-husband again and left him all alone. He swallowed hard and looked at the red-headed girl, steeling himself against all the bad feelings that were crashing over him like waves at the beach.

For the first time in a long time, he finally said something.

“She stopped caring about me, why should I care what she thinks?”

He got up and walked away, found his way to the piano. He slammed on the keys and for the first time, he tried to escape the imagined her. She didn’t disappear but he stopped talking to her.

Then one day in late November, he was sitting in his room looking outside at rain pounding against his window. He was thinking about the red-haired girl who had confronted him about Kate. She had been released right before Halloween, she had lost her battle with drugs the day after Thanksgiving. He hadn’t even known her name. Everybody in the ward was devestated, it had been a terrible loss. She had seemed to be doing so well. . . but Daniel guessed that she had been good at hiding her demons.

There was a knock on the door and the beautiful black nurse stuck her head in his room. “There’s somebody here to see you Dr. Pierce,” she said.

“I’m not in the mood for visitors,” Daniel answered.

“Oh but I think you’ll want to see her,” the nurse replied, smiling at him.

“Her?” Daniel repeated, frowning slightly.

“Hello Daniel.”

He stopped cold, he would have recognized that voice if they were in a room with a million people. It had been the voice that had haunted him for ages, it was the voice of the one woman that he thought he would never see again.

“Nurse. . . tell me if she’s really here. Please tell me that I’m not just imagining this,” Daniel whispered.

“I can see her plain as day,” the nurse replied, her voice as smooth and comforting as honey. “Do you want me to leave you two alone to talk, sugar?”

“Please,” Daniel said, finally bringing himself to look at her.

At Kate.

“Daniel. . .” Kate whispered, her voice low and twinged with regret. “Oh Daniel, look at you. . . you’re a mess.”

“You’re beautiful,” Daniel told her, raising to his feet and walking towards her. He reached out and touched her face, her hair, her shoulders. Finally his hands slid down to her hands and he grasped them like he was clutching a lifeline. “You’re really here. You left me.”

Kate’s eyes filled with tears. “I’m sorry.”

“Why are you back?”

“Donnie,” she answered.

“Oh. . .”

“He’s not a part of my life anymore. He’s not going to be part of my life ever again,” Kate said. She shook her head. “Oh Daniel. . . look at you. . . this is all my fault.”

“I’m okay,” he lied.

“I should have come sooner,” Kate said. “I’ve been back for a while now, I just didn’t want you to get worse. I was afraid that you would think I was using you. . . . I should have come sooner. I’m sorry that I didn’t.”

Daniel shook his head. “Don’t. . .”

Kate sniffed. “You’re going to get better right? You’ll start participating in group therapy and talking to the doctors? And you’ll take all your medicines?”

“I guess,” Daniel said.

“None of that Daniel! I need you to promise me that you’re going to make an effort to get better!”

“I’ll make an effort to get better,” he finally answered. “You’re not going to leave me again, are you?”

“Well, after visting hours, I’m going to have to leave you. But I’ll be back tomorrow,” Kate said. “Okay?”

“Yeah,” Daniel said. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

Kate let go of his hands and hugged him. “Oh Daniel. . .” she whispered again.

“Kate,” he whispered back, making fists in her jacket and not intending to let her go until he had to.

_The End_


End file.
